San Francisco Police shoots man with knife

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) — A suspect shot by police Wednesday in San Francisco’s Bayview District has died, police Chief Greg Suhr said.

The incident was initially reported by San Francisco Municipal Railway officials at 4:50 p.m. as police activity near Third Street and Paul Avenue.

The suspect, a man in his 20s whose name has not yet been released, was involved in an earlier stabbing nearby, according to police.

In a press conference following the shooting, Chief Suhr said the suspect didn’t respond when officers shot him with bean bags.

“They deployed the standard bean bag gun several times. He did not drop the weapon,” Suhr said. Officers fired a second round of bean bags at the suspect, but he again failed to respond to officers’ commands to drop his weapon.

“This suspect had already shown by committing a felony aggravated assault that he was a danger to others, so he could not be allowed to move away from the scene,” Suhr said.

A video posted to the social media site Instagram, apparently filmed by a bystander aboard a Muni vehicle, appears to show a man limping on the sidewalk and surrounded by police officers.

There's also a video of the shootout. It's pretty graphic. So what do you think? Were the police justified in shooting him? Or did they overreact in shooting him without even ganging up on him and restraining him?

Also, here's the UK police in how they handled a man with a machete for those who think shooting at him because he had a knife was justified (because they think there's no other way around it). LINK

Personally, I won't justify the suspect's actions but why couldn't the police not use their guns in this kind of situation and take him down without killing him? It's been done before with suspects armed with knives and even guns, even in the US.

There should be a better way of stopping a man with a knife. He did not cooperate with the police though, and if guys with guns are telling you to do something you better do it.

Lmao and of course BLM are already sticking their racist noses in it. Maybe they should focus on black people taking black lives as that outnumber police shootings period. But it's hard to play victim in that case.

He had a knife and already harmed another possibly in a attempt to kill. I don't care what others have done they shouldn't have to risk being harmed to save a criminals life.

good job.

I don't think US police officers are trained to restrain suspects wielding knifes, if you wanna make the argument that they should then do it, but I won't begrudge officers acting as they have been instructed.

Oh yeah, you're right. If they were white, they'd probably die too. In fact, here's a linkto prove it too! /sarcasm

The issue is police brutality and abuse of power, especially against blacks. Yes, black-on-black crime is a problem but the black people, as well as many other types of people, can focus on two problems and have done so. Seriously, this argument is nothing more than a derailment of a major issue, especially when dealing with the police that are suppose to have professional standards and when they're suppose to protect the community.

While he did harm another person, the issue is police response. No one is justifying the suspect's crime but there are many times when the police have subdued a violent suspect without having to use lethal force, as showed in the link above and in the original post with the UK police subduing a crazy dude with a machete.

The police aren't judge, jury, or executioner.

**** him.

drop your knife or get shot.

who in their right mind is going to take even a 1% chance on getting stabbed when you have a gun right there on your hip?

i'm supposed to condemn these guys for doing the exact same thing i would do in the same situation?

they gave him every opportunity and he didn't take advantage of it.

@drunk_pi:

If I remember correctly, the guy was a certified nut job.

Well he should've dropped the knife.

@drunk_pi: @drunk_pi: when it comes to proof about police killing what race more, their simply is none. There is no actual database that holds that info however you can find plenty of cherry picking links to support either side.

However theres plenty of stats out there showing blacks having a higher rate of criminals per capita. Stats showing that blacks murder whites slightly more than the opposite. yet there's a white racism problem? Gimme a break.

The man had a knife. He already harmed someone. Disobeyed orders and was unphased by bean bag shots. **** him. Shoot him. Why should someone with no regard to another's safety be treated with such?

You are right, he should not be. Even if the officers had any kind of RBSD or knife defence training, no officer would have a mandate to try and disarm him. Especially as the perpretrator had already used his blade. They had no choice irrespective of colour. Could have been in a Pudsy costume, same result, goes down hard.

Wouldn't pepper spray or a taser be more appropriate in this situation?

I have no sympathy for someone that doesn't follow basic commands.

Should've dropped the knife, he was given the chance to.

Pepper spray would be putting their lives in more danger though.... This subject already shown he wouldn't follow basic commands.

And does every police officer have tasers to begin with? Pretty sure some don't

You are probably right on that...about the taser that is. But maybe they should. What if it's a 175 lb police officer vs a 250 lb solid muscle perpetrator? Pretty sure most officers are only trained in very basic unarmed combat and in a lot of cases would get their butts kicked unless they have some weapon. So typically they carry a club, taser, pepper spray, etc that should be reserved for non firearm situations. Knife situations could probably use their best judgement...but most probably don't need to resort to firearms. Of course it's always a case by case basis.

My friend when we were 15 did the same thing as this crazy fool. He took out his machete on his dad, obviously he called the police. Next thing you know there was 15 patrol cars with guns pointed at him. As dumb as my friend was, he did put down his knife. This guy did not. Why didn't they just shoot his legs ? Or taze him, they had plenty of opportunities ?

of course it was justified. idiot should of dropped the knife

Police sounds 100% justified here. He had the chance to comply, they tried non-lethal means to no effect, this is the next step.

No reason they should put their lives at risk just to keep from potentially killing a psycho like this.

For the same reason they didn't just try to shoot the knife out of his hand. Police are trained to aim for a person's torso because it's the largest part of the body – and where a shot is most likely to incapacitate someone who poses a potential threat.

That and purposely aiming at anything other than center mass is considered maiming which is illegal in many states if I'm not mistaken. So you can think you're doing the right thing by shooting someones arms and legs but end up getting in as much trouble as the person you're shooting at...

That's kinda how I feel about the kid Laquan McDonald that got shot here in Chicago. I do agree the cop who shot him should probably get charged for killing him (It was obvious that he wasn't shooting to neutralize but to kill considering he completely emptied out his gun (shooting him 16 times) despite the first 2 shots dropping him), but folks are painting the picture that Laquan was a gentle giant and was completely blameless for what happened....

Its not like police are trained to use guns.

There's absolutely no way that they could have shot him in the leg one time rather than killing him.

No way whatsoever.

I think the police used appropriate force in this case.

It's not a matter of right or wrong; the guy stabbed someone, was a threat, and less-than-lethal force was used and found to be ineffective (sometimes people are just crazy enough to resist that stuff!). Since he was still a threat to people's safety and lives, they had to step up their response.

Don't see anything wrong with this one.

Yeah, he was surrounded by 5+ cops, and they couldn't take him on without having to shoot him? He didn't have a gun and, as I stated previously, there have been times that the police have used non-lethal force to take down a suspect. They have tasers, pepper sprays, and the suspect was outnumbered, so why was the gun used?

And it's not like he was shot once or twice, he was shot probably around 20 to 30 times. Sounds like overkill considering that he wasn't even armed with a gun nor did it seem that he was responsive to lower his knife since he was hit by several rubber bullets.

But the point is, are we even investing in training our police force to use non-lethal means to subdue a suspect who doesn't have a gun?

@drunk_pi: It doesn't matter if it was 100 cops, all it takes is a good swing of that knife to seriously hurt or kill 1 of them. Cops did everything they could,

Again, there were multiple police and they have multiple tools to subdue a suspect without lethal force, and as I stated earlier, suspects have been subdued with nonlethal means even when they had a gun.

Judging from the video, the cops didn't do everything they could.

@drunk_pi: They DID use non-lethal means, and that didn't work.

Yeah, they use rubber bullets. He was still outnumbered and the police had various other methods like tasers and pepper spray. The police used non-lethal methods to subdue extremely violent individuals and the UK police used a riot shield.

they tried less-than-lethal, they did not work. As he was still an armed threat and refused to listen to reason, and had proven to be a danger to others prior to the encounter with police, another action had to be taken.

have you ever encountered people on drugs? I mean hard drugs like crack, meth, and so on? They're almost superhuman; they don't feel pain, they think they're invincible, their adrenaline reserves are on full blast, and they don't have the best judgement in the world. A skinny meth addict was prowling around my place of work one night; he messed up two of our trained security guards, plus three fairly-burly employees that came to help.

Also, you need to factor in training; police are not trained to "shoot to wound"; politicians have tried to pass legislation to promote this behavior but it has constantly failed for a variety of legitimate reasons.

I don't like the fact they had to kill him, and I don't really want to defend the actions of the police, but given all the horrible directions this scenario could have gone (death of civilians, death of cops, etc) I believe the lesser evil was chosen.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of unnecessary force made every year for people to criticize police; this is not one of them.

They should have sacrificed a bystander. Let him take the knife to the chest, then they could safely subdue the subject.

It sounds like they did take quite a few steps to take him down in a non lethal way

This. It's not a Jet Li movie where a skilled hand to hand combatant disarms the bad guy with a neat kung fu move. The guy is a lethal threat as long as he has that machete and they gave him a lot of chances.

-Byshop

Agreed.

You're wrong. He had a weapon. You don't get close to someone with a weapon. Therefore, taking him down is NOT an option.

Its amazing to me that someone could be MURDERED and people are like "yeah, totally justified, screw that guy. He deserved to die!"

Regardless of demographics (which shouldn't even matter), all life is important. People are so passionate about their political views on race relations/police that they are blinded to the fact that an individual's life was ended, and that is sad.

Or maybe the politicians are right--we're desensitized to killing/violence as a result of the games we play.

@LJS9502_basic:

Did you read my post? I know he was armed with a knife, my point is that suspects have been disarmed many times without the use of lethal force so why was this different? He was surrounded and was no longer a threat considered it was pelted with pellets or whatever.

Police are trained to shoot center mass. It's the smallest chance of missing and it brings the threat down. If you start shooting for extremities you can miss and lives could be lost. They're trained to take down the threat as quickly as possible.

Did you bother to read my post? I already answered that. We get it....you don't like the police. As an uninterested bystander I can tell you the dude should have dropped the knife. Until he does so he is a threat. And threats are eliminated. That's life. But this guys life/death is not a cause you should be taking up.

So they should have rolled trashcans into his ankles while calling in the entire department to deal with one person?

If anything that video is an example on how not to deal with a situation like this.

Cops need better training than just fearing for their lives and being trigger happy. Talk to any marine and they'd think the cops are a bunch of scrubs for using guns in a situation like this.

Did you read my post? I don't hate the police but I don't like the excuses for police brutality and abuse of power. The police are vital to the community and often times, are overworked, undertrained, and underpaid because we accept that everything is okay when the reality is that it can be better, from providing proper training and having more police who are qualified and held to a higher standard.

For all I care, this guy was a criminal for doing what he did but the issue is the response. There have been cases where suspects who used weapons were subdued without non-lethal force, even when they had guns. Why is this any different? Why were those suspects armed with guns subdued without nonlethal force versus this guy who was surrounded?

marines have even looser rules of engagement.

To be fair, the Marines will have their own ROE since they're in a much different situation (a warzone), so it'll probably looser but I imagine it depends on the situation.

But the Marines are in a warzone. The police think they're in a warzone.

What I saw was a man walking away from the cops, and then one cop decided to walk into his path. Also from my understanding, a taser was not used, right? I'm pretty sure that would have made him drop the knife. I think it's time police departments at least attempt to try more means of non-lethal force before half the police department shoots into one man... with a kitchen knife.

I know what you mean, they could have done better than this. Not sure why they didn't use a tazer? And at the end the guy was more walking away from them instead of walking towards them. The problem is the same as always, the police are militarized and they rarely seem bright, damn they don't seem to even think sometimes.

On the other hand, the man was clearly in the wrong for not giving up which is why I said it's not an issue but the outrage is understandable, yes it's an issue. A country wide movement needs to happen and cops need to realize they're not in a warzone, they're in our community's.

Legally speaking they're not allowed to use their guns unless in a lethal fashion, they have to shoot to kill, it's a liability issue. If they shoot to wound it could be argued that the person wasn't posing a threat when they deployed lethal force.

Still, I don't think this was handled right, in Seattle like two decades back we had a similar situation years ago with a mentally ill guy with a giant sword (like an Excalibur) and I believe they pinned him against the wall with a giant fire ladder and sprayed him with a fire hose to disarm him. That was about 20 years ago, then about a few years ago they just shot a mentally ill guy just blocks away for skipping around in circles on the street like a moron with a knife but he didn't actually go for anyone.

I mean technically in the OP video he was moving toward an officer but you can see just before they opened fire they surrounded him and he was actually walking along the wall to try to get out of confinement when the officer stepped in front to close the gap and then they fired, I don't like the tactic of forcing a lethal decision by getting right up in a suspects face then treating any non-compliance as a threat to the officers life warrants lethal force. It's like merely containing the situation while a solution is found is too much work these days.

I mean if the bean bags didn't work, keep using them, he can't take those hits forever. Don't they have different grade bean bags either like 3 inch or 3 1/2 inch? What were they using anyways, a 12 gauge, 20 gauge? I've seen people get taken down with 12 gauge bean bags but people shake off 20 gauge bean bag rounds like they were nothing.

Plus, you know, he's black. Not saying they shot him out of overt racism but we do a lot of things subconsciously and don't think how internally we harbor attitudes about race that effect our decisions. And even if we abhor racism we're not immune to making those kinds of actions. I mean just a little while ago, white guy shoots and kills cops at that abortion clinic thingy, he's taken away in cuffs.

I get why they're not supposed to shoot to wound, but since they lie all the time to cover up each other when they sincerely do bad, why not lie to do good? They could shoot to wound, say...

"he went for his waistband and he lunged at me and I feared for my life and the lives of others so I fired my weapon, but damn all the adrenaline pumping I was too shaky and I missed and wound up hitting him in the leg instead, but fortunately my mistake opened an opportunity when he fell to the ground, so I closed in and disarm without further need for lethal force"

...I mean those are the lying cops I wanna see.